Tuesday, August 01, 2017

The Secular Disconnect

A.B. Yehoshua is one of the secular sages of modern Israel. Writer, and dare I say, philosopher, Mr. Yehoshua is one who puts the positions of Israeli secular society and the secular elite into words.

Today, on Tisha b’Av, the anniversary when we mourn the destruction of the Holy Jewish Temples (same place, 2 occasions) in Jerusalem, the Temples where G-d’s presence was manifest physically on Earth as described in the holy Torah (bible) and the details of the services in the Temples described both in the Torah and in the Mishna. We yearn for it’s rebuilding every day, the coming of Moshiach our righteous redeemer, and the return of G-d’s holy presence manifest on Earth.

On this sad day that we hope will turn to joy, Mr. Yehoshua gave an interview on Israeli radio…

“…Prize-winning author A.B Yehoshua on Tuesday slammed religious Jews who want to pray on the Temple Mount — and Diaspora Jews for not coming to live in Israel… ‘the real tragedy behind the day of mourning was not the destruction of buildings, but the fact that too many Jews still live overseas and do not understand that they have a motherland.’ … ‘“The problem is that half the nation doesn’t even think of returning to Israel. The problem isn’t some building. There’s a mosque there, an exquisite mosque that was built 1,300 years ago. There’s also the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And we should be proud that in Jerusalem we can combine the three monotheistic religions’”

- Umm, no, the church is NOT on the Temple Mount, it’s on the other side of the Old City in Jerusalem – guess he can speak as an expert but hasn’t been there.

“The Western Wall is there. Do you need to send Jews to pray on the Temple Mount? Would you be pleased if the Muslims came and bowed down at the Western Wall and prayed there?”

- Umm, many people of many religions do come and pray at the Western Wall, including Xians who sometimes fall to their knees, as pictures by Reb Gutman here on Mystical Paths have shown - guess he can comment on praying there but hasn’t been there.

“That’s their [the Muslims’] house of prayer. Our synagogues are spread all over the world and we want people to respect them and look after them. And we have to respect the places of prayer of others.”

- No one is demanding they stop praying there, and no one is interfering with their praying there…except when they attack us, kill our policemen,, and incite riots there. Respect is a 2 way street, and they are NOT respecting us. But as we’ve discussed previously here, that’s because they don’t speak the language of respect, they speak the language of honor/dishonor. – guess he’s an expert without knowing anything about what’s going on there or how they act.

Many Jews exiled by the Babylonians in the sixth century BCE failed to return to Israel, he said, and during the Second Temple period, from 530 BCE to 70 CE, half of the Jewish people already lived in the Diaspora. “Maybe the people found in the destruction of the Temple an excuse to leave Israel,” he said. “After the Temple was destroyed, for 400 years it was a heap of trash. The Jews didn’t even clean it up. They left Israel, and that’s the problem. And if the Temple is rebuilt, what, there’ll be salvation here?”

- OH MY GOSH, “the destruction as an excuse to leave”??? That’s literally like saying the Holocaust was an excuse to leave Poland. Their towns and homes were burned, their families were killed, and the traumatized survivors were hauled away at sword point. They didn’t “leave Israel”, the survivors were driven away. – guess Mr. Yehoshua doesn’t mind reframing history to meet his agenda.

The first Zionists were secular people who told Jewish immigrants to settle areas such as the Negev, the Jordan Valley and the Jezreel Valley, not to go to Jerusalem, he added. There was something symbolic in the decision of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to settle in the Negev Desert and “not to rub up against the Palestinians on a place that is holy to them.”

- BINGO. Mr. Yehoshua, who most likely lives in Tel Aviv, not in the Negev or Jordan valley, doesn’t understand why the Jews of the world aren’t rushing to move to the…Negev desert? These Diaspora Jews should NOT connect with our Jewish holy places, not connect with praying to G-d, and not connect with the Torah. Instead they should connect to the Zionist nationhood, leave their current home countries, and move to the Negev.

He’s missed the whole point. The connection to the Land of Israel is through the Torah of Israel, which is from the G-d of Israel. The peoplehood of the Jewish people fades without the Torah, as does the connection to the Land of Israel. It’s EXACTLY through the connection to the Torah that the Jewish people connect to Israel…and draws them to make their life in G-d’s gift to the Jewish People – the Land of Israel.

6
comments:

The "Times" should be embarrassed to print such drivel. That's his logic? Truly illogical of him. His is just another voice of the "enlightened leftists and elitists of the secular persuasion" that together with the Erev Rav will attack Mashiach when he begins his "clean-up" work on the world. Like vapor, they will disappear.

This Yehoshua character is just part of the Erev Rav who try to act like Jews (they think) but since they have no Jewish neshamot, they have no idea or knowledge of true Jewish history or the reason that many Jews (religious and even secular) Jews who are not rushing to make Aliya is because of the ones in leadership, supreme court, etc. who are running the country, which is definitely not Jewishly run. They, together with the arab population within the country are the ones who need to leave to make room for real Jews to come back home and live Jewish lives, not like the other nations.

A.B. Yehoshua is incorrect about the early Zionists being secular and avoiding Arab areas.

The first "Zionist" Aliyah 1882 - 1903 was largely composed of religious Jews. They not only lived near Arabs (Jaffa), they even set up five places to live in the Hauran (Syrian Golan/North West Jordan.

LondonMale, a lot of Jews made aliyah (like the Ramchal), made aliyah and left from necessity (like the Rambam) or tried to make aliyah, but were prevented(like the GR"A, but they did not call themselves Zionists. They did not make aliyah out of a sense of nationalism, but in fulfillment of a mitzvah. Please don't try to draw some false historic parallel in a misguided attempt to legitimize Zionism. We are in a major period of birur and the time has come to separate Truth from Lie, Fact from Fiction, Light from Darkness with no ambiguities whatsoever. All Torah-true Jews need to let go of any claims to Zionism. The mixture is misleading and confusing. We pray for the day the Monarchy of David replaces the Democratic State, so what connection do we really have to Zionism? What does it offer the God-fearing Jew that the Torah has not already given us?

Anonymous, are the governments of foreign lands more "Jewishly run", more in keeping with Torah, than the Israeli government? Of course not! So, this is not any kind of excuse for continuing the chillul Hashem of not living in the Land of Israel when it is possible to do so. "...and they came to the nations to which they came, and they desecrated My holy Name when it was said of them, ‘These are HaShem’s people, but they departed His land'.... (Yechezkel 36) In the Land of Israel today, you will find the same goyishe government as Jews have in Australia, Canada, the EU and the US with a bit better life expectancy and quality of life, but you won't find the kedushah of Eretz Yisrael or the same Divine protection anywhere else!

I am informing, that especially many of those on The First Aliyah, and many of those before it from the Old Yishuv, and some after the First Aliyah, were not especially motivated by Herzl. What would an Oleh in 1882 know of Herzl? The Oleh (or Olah) would surely be more influenced by running away from the Czar, and by the ideas of the GR"A, and by the writings of Zvi Hersch Kalischer among others?So they were immigrating to Eretz Yisrael out of a sense of national destiny yes, but also from a Torah observant motivation.It is still Zionism, just not the political Zionism of Herzl.And even that, the political Zionism and Medinat Yisrael, according to Reb Dov Bar Leib, has a three-fold part to play in the Geulah process:

1) Kibbutz Galiyot, the ingathering of the exiles. 2 - The building of a physical infrastructure for Jews to live and work and travel. 3) The excavation and study of biblical archaelogy.